Page 308 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 28: John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Autumn

This claim is a paradox: it doesn’t seem to make sense. No one listens to their music player with the Notes
volume at zero so they can “imagine” the music they aren’t hearing.
This is the first example of a trick that Keats is going to play over and over again for the rest of the
poem.
He treats the scenes on the urn as if they were real places and events, and not just a depiction of a
place. Real people are actually “living” on the urn, but they are frozen in time.
The pipe-player actually is playing a song, but you can’t hear the song because urns don’t make
sounds. The speaker is imagining what the song would song like, and he thinks this imaginary song
inside his head is better than anything he has heard with his ears.
In other words, he prefers to the world of fantasy to the physical world.
He tells the “soft pipes” to keep playing, even though he’s the one who is making the pipes play, by
imagining them.
In this sense, it’s almost like he’s talking to himself. He is both musician and audience.

Lines 13-14
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
The speaker is still giving orders that only he can obey. He tells the pipes not to play to his “sensual”
or physical ear, but to the metaphorical ear of his “spirit,” or imagination. This spiritual ear is
“more endear’d,” or cherished, than his flesh-and-blood ears.
As if that weren’t strange enough, he asks the pipes to play “ditties of no tone,” that is, songs that
don’t have any notes or sounds, at least in the real world. Imaginary songs.

Lines 15-16
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
The identity of our mysterious musician revealed! It was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with
the Lead Pipe. It was a good-looking young guy (“fair youth”) sitting under the trees, and his pipe
was probably made of wood.
Here comes Keats’s trick again. He treats the urn like a real place, and because this place never
changes, it means that the guy under the tree will always be playing the same song, in the same
pose forever!
It’s like Bill Murray’s life in Groundhog Day, but with even less variety.
But for the speaker, this is actually a good thing. Because the seasons never change, the weather will
always be nice and the trees will never be “bare,” without leaves.
It’s Eden. Eternal spring.

Line 17
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Now he turns back to the first scene, the guys chasing the women, and he starts talking to one of the
guys.
He calls him “bold,” presumably because he has taken the initiative the chase his lady around the
forest. In modern-day terms, he’s like a guy who is never afraid to ask for a girl’s number.
To paraphrase, the speaker says, “I know you’re hoping to make it with that nice girl you’re chasing,
but I’ve got bad news for you: It’s not going to happen. Ever. I don’t think you realize this, but you

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